We are interested in generating a class diagram where the classes are grouped in blocks of namespaces.
Our goal is an overview of our projects domain landsacpe.
Doxygen has the information about namespaces and classes.
We would like to know if there allready is a way to generate this kind of diagram or if someone can give us a jumpstart on how/where it could be integrated?
Selecting a subset of namespaces or taged classes would be nice.
Related
We need to create a booking system that allows rape victims to book sessions with a counsellor (who is a volunteer therefore is not on duty 24/7) online. The organisation used to do the booking process over the phone, writing down important information.
This is the package diagram I created for a project. I am not sure: am I allowed to just use the packages as entities for the class diagram?
A package is a tool to structure models by grouping somehow related pieces into namespaces.
It is not unusual to recognize a decomposition that coincides somehow with larger components (e.g. Client, Application and Data). But it is not correct to use packages as a substitute for a class. It may even look confusing.
It is not a problem to keep enclosing or nested packages such as Booking system in a class diagram. But you should use a proper class box for classes. You would then be able to show not only the properties but also the operations in a different compartment. Last but not least, you could be more precise in the relationships between classes, considering that packages are only related via dependencies and some special package operations, whereas classes can be related also with associations, inheritance, etc..
For example, your diagram tells only that Booking is dependent on Client. And this means the content of one package needs to know about the other packages. But in reality Client and Booking should be associated i.e. an instance of Client would be related for a longer time to some specific instances of Booking. In this case, you'd expect that you could easily navigate from the one to the other. Associations also allow to specify multiplicity, e.g. that one client could have 1 or more bookings, but each booking would be for only one client.
Other remarks, unrelated to the question:
Your comment box suggests that you try to explain the purpose of the system, perhaps for some stakeholders. You may therefore consider using a use-case diagram to show the big picture with the different actors and the goals they want to achieve with the system.
In a class box, you could add an «Entity» stereotype above the name of the class. Entities are domain classes that matter to the users.
Data storage system seems not to fit in the diagram: it's not really an entity. Perhaps it's a class, a component or a package, but not really an entity.
So I have to make a class diagram for a Unity game I made as part of a project.
Trouble is I have to make a class for every script, of which there are 60.
The guidelines given to me simply states: Create a class diagram of your game.
So should I be splitting this up into several different class diagrams or literally just one inevitably disgusting 60 class diagram?
Your guidelines already told you what to do for this project: "Create a class diagram of your game." If this is a class project, create a single horse blanket, make your professor happy, and get a good grade.
However, on a real-world project, you should create many micro-subject-area diagrams for your audience. Review with each person only the diagrams that matter to them. That's how you (and your victims) can survive very large projects.
To create micro-subject-area diagrams, create a set of diagrams, each containing 7 ± 3 classes. Every class has only one fully-defining diagram showing all of its compartments and associations. Everywhere else, the class should appear only with its class name (to help define other classes) and a hyperlink. The hyperlink makes it work like an edge connector that takes you to its fully-defining diagram. (If you use MagicDraw, there is a free plug-in available, called AutoStyler, that automates this.)
It is legitimate to split up class diagrams, as class diagrams are meant to clarify things, which a gigantic mega class diagram arguably does not do. As such, class diagrams should usually concentrate on a few specific aspects that you want to show:
Do you want to provide a detailed structural representation of a given set of classes? If so, only depict these classes with all members, but skip any other classes (e.g., do not draw them as class nodes, but instead just mention their names as member/parameter types where appropriate).
Do you want to provide the class structure related to a particular functionality? If so, draw the relevant set of classes, but skip irrelevant members (e.g. members that have to be there for the sake of infrastructure support, but that are not a part of the actual business logic you are focusing on).
etc.
Now, when there is any expectation of completeness rather than a mere overview, it needs to be clear what parts of the diagram are complete and which ones are abbreviated. Again, this is possible in various ways:
As in the first bullet item above, mentioning a type name without drawing it is a clear indication that there is another type that is not depicted in the current diagram, without making the depicted class incomplete.
Alternatively, you can make use of "natural boundaries by abstraction" in your code: If you use classes from an extensive hierarchy, it may be sufficient to draw only the base class, or a few general base classes, in one diagram, while detailing the actual class hierarchy (without any of the context from the other diagram) in a separate diagram.
Two remarks on your specific question:
In your case, "60 scripts" sounds like various of them may easily fall into the last case, allowing you to separate overall architectural diagrams from a class hierarchy diagram.
You say there are "guidelines". If this is for some kind of competition or for any other kind of evaluation (e.g., for studying), take all this advice with caution: Internal grading guidelines might not necessarily be congruent with what would be practical/useful in an actual project.
tl;dr
Create as many class diagrams as you need
Avoid wallpaper diagrams only
Create wallpaper diagrams, though. But assemble them from existing diagrams.
Try to spot sub-domains (things that belong together) and place them in one diagram
Why and how are dependency relationships used?
I've come across a PiggyBank example where the Analysis Model consists of a class diagram with dependency relationships.
They use two relationships "use" and "instantiate" to describe the relationships between the classes.
I don't agree with the relationship that the boundary class TransferMoneyForm has a "use" to the TranferMoneControl. I believe it should be the other way around.
Can someone exaplain to me how these two relationships should be used. Thank you in advance.
The diagram shown there is not a correct and full UML class diagram. In such all the associations and generalizations should be defined, and what is abstract, what is public or not. To show what descends from what, what is hidden, what will be never instantiated and what fields of one class has types of other classes. Here we see only information about the
functions.
And it is logical. If you'll look at the previous chapter, there is written: "A control class represents a self-contained process..." So, they are talking on processes, not classes, instances and fields.
It is NOT a class diagram. And nowhere is said that it is. It is named "Transfer Money Participants diagram". They do use the elements of the class diagram, but not to the fullest and so create something more common. It is some approximate undefined diagram on some classes, something between class, communication or component diagrams. Maybe, it is the old style of IBM? Experts (What's the best UML diagramming tool?, 1st answer) say, "IBM Rational Software Architect did not implement UML 2.0". )
As for the question, who uses whom... According to Sparx VP UML, a "usage dependency" is a "relationship in which one element requires another element ... for its full functionality". According to wiki, "The client element somehow "uses" the supplier". Here the form hasn't sense without the controlling class, and vice versa. So, I'd say, the use goes in both sides. But more honest would be to create a normal communication or component diagram. The class diagram has NOT an element to say about sending and accepting the messages. And the "use" is definitely not for it. And when they have decided not to use logic, they can put there virtually anything.
If you are making a class diagram and one your class uses function(s) of another one, that is the case to draw a use dependency connection.
i have a question:
Within my modeling tool (Enterprise Architect) I have modeled a meta-model (UML based).
Now I want to transform the meta-model into Ecore. But I don't know how to do it.
Within Enterprise Architect I can export the Meta-Model to UML XMI. Does anyone know if it is possible to transform the generated XMI to Ecore XMI ?!
Thanks
Does anyone know if it is possible to transform the generated XMI to Ecore XMI ?!
Yes, it's possible - at least in outline. You can think of the problem in two parts:
What's the semantic mapping? In other words, how do you map concepts in the source XMI to concepts in the target eCore model?
How will you implement those mappings in practice?
Semantic Mapping
I'm assuming here your metamodel focuses on static structure. ECore doesn't support dynamic concepts outside of declaring EOperations. More on dynamics below if that's of relevance.
I don't know EA specifically, nor which version(s) of XMI it supports. However, it will be some variant of the core UML concepts: Class, Attribute, Operation, Association, AssociationEnd, etc.
eCore has a similar (if smaller) set of concepts: EClass, EAttribute, EDataType, EReference, EOperation, etc. There's a fairly strong correlation among the 'type' concepts; for example:
UML Class --> EClass
Attribute --> EAttribute
Operation --> EOperation
So the mapping there should be straighforward. Basically create one instance of the ECore equivalent for each UML concept.
Relationships are a little less obvious but still doable. ECore doesn't support relationships directly; EReference is the only analogous concept. However it's pretty easy to synthesise associations, for example:
A one way navigable UML association becomes a single EReference with min & max cardinality copied over
A UML bi-directional association becomes two EReferences, one in each direction. You should also set the EOtherEnd property, which effectively says the two EReferences are part of the same association.
Hopefully that gives you the idea.
Implementation
Having defined your conceptual mapping there are lots of options on how to do it. All will generally follow the same basic model:
Parse Source --> Map Source Concepts to Target Concepts --> generate target text.
You could use xslt (since it's just an XML->XML transformation). You could also use one of the many Model-to-model (M2M) and/or Model-to-text (M2T) toolkits available. See e.g. the eclipse modeling project (M2M, M2T). You could also go direct from EA by reading the model using the EA API instead of generating & parsing XMI. Which you choose will depend on your environment, skillset, etc.
If you want to see what it could look like in practice, you might take a look at MagicDraw. It provides ECore export out of the box. (Note it's a paid-for tool - but eval is available).
It might also be worth asking Sparx directly: I'd be a bit surprised if there isn't some ECore export add-on/plugin available for EA.
hth.
Dynamics
If your model has dynamics (state models etc.) then you have more of a problem. ECore doesn't cover those concepts at all. It's possible to extend ECore and that might be an option - but it's potentially more work as the tools that work with ECore will be less likely to understand your extensions.
You can easily go from Ecore to UML but the other way is not really possible. You have few plugins but when you try to use them it does not work.
Me and several other developers are currently cleaning up our legacy code base, mostly separating visual and data layers. To help developers not involved in this refactoring understand the model, I'd like to introduce a (rather informal) class diagram with comments about scope and desired usage for each class. Since I'm lazy, I'd like to use UMLGraph for that.
However there is a small problem: we've got a perl code base and the refactoring uses Moose roles extensively. Now I don't know UML good enough to find a proper abstaction for roles -- my first guess would be interfaces, but they also contain implementation; multiple inheritance doesn't quite cut it either.
How do I (or how would you) represent roles properly in a class diagram?
I'm no UML expert but in the original paper Traits were represented like this
Traits Diagram http://img.skitch.com/20100422-8iey4atkkama53ni81c3pca562.jpg
I would represent a role as a UML class with the «role» stereotype. The class composing the role would then have an association to the role with the stereotype «does».
Simple Composition http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/5665/simplecomposition.png
If I needed to further adapt the role, with aliases or exclusions, I'd create that as an association class with properly annotated members and with the «adaptation» stereotype. The name of the association class wouldn't matter, because it won't be a real type in the design; so I'd leave it unnamed.
Composition with Conflict Resolution http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/244/conflictcomposition.png
(Please note that I have shown the adaptation "class" connected to the composition and the role it adapts. What I really wanted to do was connect it to the association between MyComposition and MyRole1. It's just that the tool I used didn't support association classes).